Warm Personalities Required By Kindergarten Staff

Press, Volume C, Issue 29634, 3 October 1961, Page 2

Warm Personalities Required By Kindergarten Staff

“The Kindergarten movement has made valiant efforts to recruit teachers in sufficient numbers girls with very special personal qualifications necessary for work with the very young child but, like all other services, has not been able to meet the need that exists,” said Miss M. Gallagher, director of Pre-School Services, in Christchurch yesterday.

"We are short , of young people in the 17 to 19 age Sp. And there are too for teaching, nursing and the other professions, commerce and industrj. There just aren’t enough to go round in a community where all services are expanding,” *e said. “Progress has been made. More young women are indeed coming forward for training in kindergarten work, but the demand for Free Kindergartens throughout the country is such that even these increasing numbens are still too few to staff all the kindergartens that would be necessary if every group which wanted one got one.” .. .. Miss Gallagher said the New Zealand movement was not alone in its staffing problem. The development of pre-school service* in Australia was being hampered by lack of sufficient staff and in England there were too few teachers trained for the work to spare them for much development in pre-school education. < ,

Warm Personality A kindergarten teacher, needed a warm, human personality with sufficient interest in family life and a sufficient knowledge of the problems of growth, to be able

to provide the best kind ,of environment for the young child, Miss Gallagher said. Environment was important as the child was entering its first organised experiences outside its own home. . *'A teacher needs to be able to give the wise guidance little children need in coping with their ordinary, everyday problems," she said. “The knowledge and skills are provided for in the kindergarten training course but the quality of understanding, of course, comes only from knowledge. It is the warm persona] interest in the young child and the innate feeling for young children that is the first essential if training is to be really fruitful.” Miss Gallagher said the work of the kindergarten teachers was not confined to work with children. A very large part of their work was carried out with the parents, she said. , . .s>» Home and Family The most important factor in the happy development of the young child Was the

home and the family. Nothing that pre-school services could provide would take its place. But young children could benefit from the opportunity of spending a few hours of the day in

organised play groups where they had the company of others in their own broad age-group, well-planned play activities with materials that were carefully chosen, with the time and space necessary to follow their own pursuits and to achieve something really worth while. "But if this is to be really worth while the home and kindergarten must co-oper-ate very closely,” said Miss Gallagher. “The mother and the teacher must share the special knowledge that each has and co-operate very closely in the interests of the child with whom they are both so deeply concerned. "To be successful in this part of kindergarten work a kindergarten teacher must be a mature, well-balanced person herself and must be able and prepared to cooperate with parents and to share with them the work that she undertakes.”